Joe Miller came to see me.. Joe wanted me to know that he's his own man.. Just looking at his website it's clear that is NOT the case. Apparently he thought that I have influence.
I appreciated that Joe and Adele Morgan came to visit me at the fair. Adele has not darkened my booth in several years. She is a local religious singer who now claims her independence from Sarah Palin while she's Joe Miller's biggest fan. However, she's been seen just about everywhere with Sarah.
The reality is that I don't trust your judgement....I may not have made it clear but I will be voting for Scott McAdams in the general along with Ethan Berkowitz. It's really all about personal integrity to me, especially these days. If you don't have that, the issues don't really matter. All important issues can be debated among reasonable people. Yes, both these men who happened to be Democrats have integrity, fairly conservative ideas and no ethical issues or ties to one, Sarah Palin, who again has obvious moral and ethical issues. There is a thread that runs through this new crop of politician where honesty and integrity are pushed aside. Where it's so easy to say that you believe in GOD but lie they lie to your face. Where a potential leader is judge on their chrisma rather than their character. That thread is of course Sarah Palin and a new culture of corruption... I don't care what party or what you say you can do. Your actions and motivation speak louder than your words..
Bristol Palin was on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" on Friday night and Jay asked her about her new gig on "Dancing With The Stars." She said she doesn't have much dance experience, to which Jay asked, "Did you go to your prom?" and Bristol responded, "No, I was pregnant."
Speaking of, the two discussed Bristol's recent breakup with Levi Johnston. She said, "I'm not disappointed, I'm not heartbroken." She explained that Levi is totally different now, remarking, "The guy I fell in love with was a hard-working Alaskan man that didn't want to wear straight-legged jeans and boots and be chased by [gossip site] Radar...it's sad to watch." Check out what else she had to say.
Hi neighbors. I've been forced to move my blog to TypePad. I have until Sept. 30 to continue here at VOX. You can visit me at http://syrin.typepad.com/. You can follow me on TypePad by visiting my profile. See you there!
By JIM VANDEHEI & JONATHAN MARTIN
Fox News has been making a serious charge about mainstream political reporters: They hate Sarah Palin.
This is not just wrong; it’s absurd. The reality is exactly the opposite: We love Palin.
And if Palin does not exactly love us, she’s smart enough to recognize how quickly reporters devour every provocative remark she utters. She knows how to exploit our weakness to guarantee herself exposure far out of proportion to her actual influence in Republican politics.
It’s a tangled, symbiotic affair — built on mutual dependency and mutual enabling.
For the media, Palin is great at the box office. Among modern American political figures, she is second only to Barack Obama in generating clicks (for websites such as this one) and ratings (for the cable news networks hungering around the clock for fresh material).
For Palin, the benefit is the exposure she needs to maintain her public profile and stir up chatter about a potential presidential candidacy — both of which help her continue to rake in millions of dollars in speaking fees. She also gets a villain with which to further energize her supporters: The more she convinces them “the MSM” hates her, the more they love her.
The problem is that this relationship — what in Hollywood they call being “frenemies” — treats Palin as though she were the central figure in the politics of 2012. No realistic appraisal of Palin’s current strengths and weaknesses or of the history of Republican politics suggests that this is necessarily true.
The new Vanity Fair Sarah Palin profile is enthralling: rage-fueled breakdowns, domestic violence (is there a battered spouse center for First Dudes?) and Madoff-worthy financial manipulation. Equally fascinating is the climate of fear and confusion that Michael Joseph Gross discovered in Wasilla, where townspeople are terrified of discussing their former mayor/governor, and deeply uncomfortable with the world-famous media creation that she has become. "To appreciate how alien Palin has become in Wasilla, how inscrutable to her own people, you have to wrap your mind around the fact that Sarah Palin is more famous than any other Alaskan, ever," Gross writes. "It still does not quite seem real to most Alaskans that there are all these thousands of people in the Lower 48 turning out for … Sarah."
But if they want surreal, they should travel to the Lower 48. Because it's not until you leave Alaska that you realize it no longer exists — only Sarah Palin exists.
Palin doesn't merely represent the Alaskan archetype in the national consciousness; she is Alaska. The rest of us are stars in her constellation, fish in her sea
Whereas Alaska used to enter my every conversation, I now rarely bring it up—if I've had enough whiskey and someone asks, I'll grimace and mutter yeah, "Palin country."
But as much as I'd like to avoid the subject, I'm probably stuck with it forever.
Vanity Fair's Michael Joseph Gross is out with an extensive and unforgiving profile of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that delves deeply into the untold intricacies of Alaska's biggest celebrity. With biting detail normally relegated to the pages of anti-Palin blogs, Gross paints a picture of Palin as a religious, two-faced, larger-than-life figure known by many around her to be ill-tempered and perhaps even treacherous.
According to Gross's profile, which includes countless interviews with former Palin associates from those who weren't afraid to talk (many were), Palin has morphed from her public perception as a small-town hockey mom with conservative values into a ruthless media maestro who is both controlled by and controlling of those around her. An extensive network of handlers and a closely-watched digital empire dutifully work to manage her now-prominent message, while she herself attempts to be the master of potentially harmful stories that scorned associates could bring to light.
Sarah Palin appears almost consumed by her celebrity, Gross writes. She has forsaken many of her former Alaska supporters and even her confidantes and family, particularly her husband, Todd, who Gross reports has a notoriously strained relationship with the former Alaska governor and beauty queen.
Palin, whose codename is "North Star," Gross writes, often spends big. She's well-compensated for her speaking appearances, and her fees are often paid by shady and shifting organizations that pop up out of nowhere, and often disappear just as quickly.
Here are some interesting excerpts from Gross's piece, which is certainly worth checking out in full:
- According to Gross, Palin is a notoriously poor tipper:
Of the many famous people who have stayed at the Hyatt in Wichita (Cher, Reba McEntire, Neil Young), Sarah Palin ranks as the all-time worst tipper: $5 for seven bags. But the bellhops had it good in Kansas, compared with the bellman at another midwestern hotel who waited up until past midnight for Palin and her entourage to check in--and then got no tip at all for 10 bags. He was stiffed again at checkout time. The same went for the maids who cleaned Palin's rooms in both places--no tip whatsoever.
- Sarah Palin is known for her terrible temper, Gross writes, which has exploded into disputes with her husband and "First Dude," Todd:
One friend of the Palins' remembers an argument between Sarah and Todd: "They took all the canned goods out of the pantry, then proceeded to throw them at each other. By the time they got done, the stainless-steel fridge looked like it had got shot up with a shotgun. Todd said, 'I don't know why I even waste my time trying to get nice things for you if you're just going to ruin them.' " This friend adds, "As soon as she enters her property and the door closes, even the insects in that house cringe. She has a horrible temper, but she has gotten away with it because she is a pretty woman."
- The uncooperative nature of Sarah Palin's vice presidential campaign team often bred enmity between her and running mate John McCain, Gross reports
:
When John McCain decided to pull out of Michigan, a decision Palin disagreed with, Recher and Palin hatched a plan one day to make an early-morning drive to Michigan anyway. The Secret Service, becoming aware of the plan, asked the McCain campaign what it should do. The answer came: "Shoot out the tires."
- The whole media fracas caused by Palin's image as a rough-and-tumble moose-hunting frontierswoman was largely fabricated, an acquaintance told Gross
:
"This whole hunter thing, for Sarah? That is the biggest fallacy," says one longtime friend of the family. "That woman has never hunted. The picture of her with the caribou she says she shot? She got out of the R.V. to pose for a picture. She never helps with the fishing either. It's all a joke." The friend goes on to recall that when Greta Van Susteren came to the house to interview Palin "[Sarah] cooked moose chili and whatnot. Todd was calling everyone he knew the day before--'Do you got any moose?' Desperate."
In a new survey released Monday, most respondents said that they do not think Sarah Palin would have the ability to be an effective president.
In the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, conducted Aug. 3-5 by CBS News among 847 adult respondents, 59% responded that they thought Palin could not be an effective president compared to only 26% who said that she could be.
Eighty percent of liberals and 70% of moderates said Palin could not be an effective president. Only 41% of conservatives said that she could be, while 40% said that she could not be. However, somewhat more Republicans said that Palin could be effective - 47% said she could be while 40% said she could not.
While the 2012 election is a long way off and poll numbers are difficult to interpret, in one recent poll of potential 2012 matchups, conducted Aug. 6-9 by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, 43% of registered voters said they would support Palin to 49% for Obama. Other possible presidential candidates, including Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich, performed similarly, although Huckabee and Romney received slightly closer 3 point margins (the poll's margin of error for general elections questions was 4%). The poll showed the same four candidates tightly bunched in the Repulican primary race.
Polls taken since last November have largely shown a public with an unfavorable view of Palin - the current Pollster.com trend estimate has Palin with a 36.4% favorable rating and 52.7% unfavorable.
The president of one the strongest unions left alive in America - the AFL-CIO -- was in Anchorage Friday. Richard Trumka protested downtown with union workers in a dispute with the Sheraton Anchorage Hotel. This is documented. KTUU.com reporter Christine Kim wrote a short story noting part of Denali Street near the hotel was plugged with protesters.
But the protest outside the hotel was not the big Trumka news in Anchorage on Friday. Oh no. Not by a long shot. Long before the march on the Sheraton, Trumka lit up the news aggregators of America with a story about a speech he was supposed to make. He was supposed to go the AFL-CIO's biennial gathering and lambaste former, half-term Gov. Sarah Palin.
saraHe was supposed to, you might say, venture into the den of the Mama Grizzly, to "count coup" as the Plains Indians of North America used to call up-close and personal acts of bravery.
Did Trumka do this?
Who the hell knows.
There was a time in this country when a major political player had to actually make the speech before the speech became real news, but those days appear to be over. I went looking for a story about Trumka's speech on Saturday because I was curious as to what sort of reception he got in Anchorage given that there are some Palin worshippers in the Alaska AFL-CIO. I know. I've met some, though I doubt they are the majority faction.
Outside of some groups on the Christian right, it's hard to find any group of people in Alaska these days where the Palinistas are a majority faction. But there are a lot of strong Palin minorities in almost any collection of Alaskans. There are still plenty of people in this state who love Sarah Palin. So I was curious to read about the reaction of the Alaska rank-and-file to Trumka's planned speech.
I was so curious I almost went to hear his speech myself. Almost.
It had been a long week. I'd put in my 60 hours of news gathering. And I was tired -- as I am sure many others in the news business are -- of chasing the Sarah Palin story around in circles with absolutely no substance being added to the discussion of the very real problems facing this state and country.
And, hey, by Friday evening the Trumka story was already looking like old news anyway. Everyone and their uncle had already written about it. Hours before the speech was delivered, if it was delivered, Palin was responding on her Facebook page to the speech that wasn't yet a speech. And by the time the AFL-CIO faithful gathered at 6 p.m. for the reception scheduled before the speech, the virtual world was aflame in debate about what Trumka had said, though he hadn't yet said it, and what Palin had said in response, though she hadn't said anything at all. She was wholly virtual.
Palin had a superb -- simply excellent -- response to Trumka's non-speech up on her Facebook page before the speech happened, if it happened. But anyone who thought Palin wrote this Facebook post hasn't read Palin's jottings for the last 20 years or listened to the speeches she herself has written. To describe her syntax as shattered would be kind. She has never met a simple, declarative sentence she liked, or learned that little things like subjects, verbs and objects are supposed to work together. But, that said, she's obviously good at hiring writers. She got a pretty good one to do her book -- "Going Rogue'' -- and she's obviously got another pretty good one for Facebook. Give her credit for this.
And then give her credit for something else, popularizing that term "lamestream media.''
Because a lot of the media has gone seriously lamestream. Long before lunch time in Alaska, the Wall Street Journal was reporting "labor official Richard Trumka launched an unusually harsh verbal assault on Sarah Palin Thursday, and he did it in her own backyard of Alaska. The AFL-CIO president accused Palin of resigning as governor to avoid accountability - 'so she wouldn't have a record that could be scrutinized'" - and said she had turned her back on her home state."
By TIMOTHY EGAN
Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president.
Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”
That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party.
It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.
Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.
The Democrats may deserve to lose in November. They have been terrible at trying to explain who they stand for and the larger goal of their governance. But if they lose, it should be because their policies are unpopular or ill-conceived — not because millions of people believe a lie.
Palin: I quit Alaska governorship so that 'obstructionists wouldn't win'
Sarah Palin's passionate and repeated defense of talk show host Dr. Laura shows the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate is "no longer fit to lead," prominent black conservatives say.
The Daily Beast's John Avlon interviewed black leaders in the Republican Party and conservative movement and found few willing to back Palin's defense of Laura Schlessinger, who announced this week she would be ending her long-running radio show after using the "n-word" 11 times during a debate with a caller.
Michel Faulkner, a Republican challenging House Rep. Charlie Rangel in this fall's election, told Avlon: “Why Sarah Palin feels she needs to join in to Dr. Laura’s personal meltdown is beyond me. She’s sounding like she just likes to hear her own voice—and the voice that she has is no longer credible. It says that a leading voice among conservatives has joined the ranks of the entertainers—trying to shock us each day with more and more outlandish commentary. And at that moment that person is no longer fit to lead.”
The anger at Palin coming from black conservatives led Avlon to conclude that Palin "might finally have gone too far and picked a fight she cannot win."
Palin sent out a series of Tweets earlier this week, urging Dr. Laura not to be silenced by the anger over her comments. "Don't retreat ... reload!" Palin urged Schlessinger.
"Lady, are you kidding me?" Faulkner asked. "That is scary language in anyone’s terminology. Sarah Palin scares me."
Conservative columnist Deroy Murdock "took an even harder line" with Palin, the Daily Beast reports:
Sarah Palin's tweets resemble something scribbled by a ninth-grade cheerleader. Is it asking too much for a reputed American political leader to communicate in complete sentences? Palin's gravitas gap is growing into the Gravitas Canyon,” said the media fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. “Even worse, she deploys her vacuity to defend an acerbic talk-show host who just detonated herself by tossing around the word 'ni**er' on the air 11 times, as if it were a volleyball. The American right can do better than this. And it must.
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Helen said:
It is so good to know you are there plugging away Syrin. Please continue doing what you do, your voice... read more
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Syrin, well said, i am so glad that you stand up and speak for what you believe in and that... read more
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[this is good]I talked to Joe concerning many things. Not knowing if he was aware of my alter ego Syrin. So I... read more
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